EA Sports Fight Night 2004: Hands-On

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Does the new control scheme mark the beginning of a new era for boxing games?

By Jeremy Dunham

After releasing the placeholder sequel Knockout Kings 2003 for the GameCube last season, Electronic Arts has returned to the squared circle for something a little different. Scrapping its previous engine entirely and building an all-new code from scratch, EA Canada's EA Sports Fight Night 2004 marks the beginning of the company's latest attempt at reinventing an aging franchise. We had the opportunity to give the new software a test drive for ourselves today, when Senior Producer Kudo Tsunoda (who has previously worked on such titles as Dragon Rage, Might & Magic VII, and Army Men: Air Attack) dropped by the IGN office to show us just what his team was working on.

Already getting buzz because of its innovative control scheme, Fight Night has almost completely done away with the need to use the face buttons. Emulating the actual movements of professional boxers, the right analog stick on the PS2 and Xbox gamepad dictates how and where a punch is thrown. Snapping the stick in a diagonally-upwards motion, for instance, executes a jab and straight attacks while an upwards fireball maneuver pulls off hooks and roundhouses. Moving the stick downward and then snapping it back up in a half-circle performs uppercuts, and holding the L1 or Left trigger allows you to aim your shots at the body rather than the head. The speed and length of your motion will also dictate the speed and effectiveness of your shot as well, and switching from left to right you has to be done properly with the motion of the stick; as the sudden "lost-animation back and forth switch" found in other boxing games like Knockout Kings and Rocky won't let you cheat with speeds not humanly possible.

This approach applies to defense as well. As holding down the left trigger when not punching will give players the ability to move their torsos with full 360-degrees of rotation. Swaying side to side and leaning back or leaning forward as a reaction to your opponent makes the defense a lot more realistic. The right trigger, on the other hand, initiates the block animations and depending on what direction you push on the stick will change your defensive posturing. Holding R1 and pushing up puts both hands in front of your face, left puts one hand to the left, and down blocks to the body. Though it should be noted that the actual defensive value of these maneuvers are actually a lot less rigid than they sound -- and players will be able to react every punch regardless of where it is thrown if they're skilled enough to do it.

The face buttons still do come into play, but only for specialized maneuvers. For the most part you'll use them to taunt your opponents between offensive flurries, and certain fighters will even have customized animations that match their in-ring personas. Special punches operate in the same way, as tapping the X (A on Xbox) button pulls off the fighters most powerful strike with two different specials allowed per fighter (one for the body, one for the head). Special punches use the same signature approach that the taunts do, and guys like Marciano and Lewis do exactly the type of attacks we'd expect them to do. Of course, cover boy Roy Jones Jr. is probably the best example of how this work: as he uses the same behind-the-back one-punch hook that knocked out Glen Kelly in 2002. But regardless of who you use, it's already pretty exciting stuff.